East Bay high school teacher Bob Moorhead has heard countless reasons students ask permission to leave class, but never until last week, "I have to go to the bathroom. My belly button ring is falling off."

-- Not only is Friday royal wedding day, and National Hairball Awareness Day, but also, says Lois Payne, Alumni Day at Vallejo High School.

-- As to the newly constructed gates on the Golden Gate Bridge, noticed by Christine Orth, bridge spokeswoman Mary Currie explains: "Security measures are modified and/or upgraded routinely. The latest addition, the first of several Main Cable security gates, was installed April 11 on the west side main cable to further assist in the prevention of unauthorized persons climbing on the main cables."

The business department:

-- Tom Sweeney, doorman at the Sir Francis Drake, has signed a new five-year contract, the fulfillment of which will coincide with his 40th year on the job. "I still love opening doors," says Sweeney, who'll run the Bay to Breakers this year in his Beefeater outfit.

-- Job-hunting Regan McMahondiscovered a Craigslist posting for "creative and enthusiastic" part-time writers for "several magazine ventures" in the East Bay. "Initially, compensation is primarily the opportunity to build your portfolio of experience by having your work published in an upscale magazine. ... Regular contributors will be compensated after a trial period, primarily through barter programs (gift certificates from various businesses which advertise in our magazines)." Never mind money.

Perhaps this hasn't worked well before. The ad also specifies, "If you are a bigger, negative-thinking 'writer' (whiner) with nothing better to do than criticize ... Don't bother sending a reply!"

-- Interior designer Ray Azoulay, who sells antiques and fine arts in his Venice (Calif.)-based business, Obsolete, has sued Restoration Hardware, which is headquartered in Corte Madera. Azoulay, whose San Francisco branch of Obsolete was a victim of the recession, claims that a woman who twice bought some lamps from him in Venice used a San Francisco address for billing, and then a Corte Madera address - without identifying that one as headquarters of Restoration Hardware - for shipping. After the lamps were delivered, says the suit, Restoration produced copies of them.

According to his suit, this was misrepresentation, fraudulent, false and unfair. According to Restoration Hardware's chief financial officer, Chris Newman, everyone knows Restoration sells reproductions, the lamps are not being "presented in a false light," copying antique designs is not unethical, and Azoulay does not have any creative rights to the designs anyway.

Azoulay says he's not looking for financial gain from the suit, but hoping "they cease from this type of design 'bootlegging' and create a scholarship fund to award creative new design." Restoration spokeswoman Katya Sorokkosays, "The claims are totally meritless."

-- Walking in Berkeley, Marilyn Pon overheard a woman on a bike telling her companion, a 6-year-old boy: "It feels good to be powerful, but if you're powerful in a mean way, it hurts your heart. It hurts everyone's heart!"

-- And Natasha Pehrsonsaw a bumper sticker on a car in Santa Rosa: "Blessings on everyone in the World - No Exceptions." (Why do I wish that sighting had come with a report that the driver had been spotted making the one-finger gesture to another driver?)